A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages
posted by Artw on May 8, 2009 - 47 comments

This presentation was given at the golden gate ruby conference. The author of the talk has posted an apology of sorts, but some people still aren't happy.
posted by handee on Apr 30, 2009 - 148 comments

When Wrekin Construction went into administration last week, it blamed the Royal Bank of Scotland for demanding repayment of an overdraft. However, the 2007 accounts show that among the assets of the company is a ruby it called the "Gem of Tanzania". Wrekin had bought the stone off one of its shareholders for £11m worth of shares - more than four times the record for a single ruby at auction. [more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon on Mar 16, 2009 - 20 comments

Speaking of Edward Tufte (see below), sparklines are a type of information graphics characterized by their small size and data density named by Tufte. Sparklines were used by sites reporting the 2008 election and were first introduced on MeFi in 2005. There are now several ways to put sparklines on your own web site including: a simple jQuery plugin, a downloadable PHP library, a dynamic generator using a Python CGI program, and even a library for Ruby on Rails.
posted by netbros on Feb 27, 2009 - 8 comments

Riding the Waves of interest in MVC web frameworks such as Rails, Django, TurboGears, and Cake, comes the latest entrant: Ruby Waves. Interesting features include request lambdas, hot patchable, nestable templates, app reusability, and decoupled controller/view. Is the proliferation of MVC projects helping to push innovation forward? Or pointlessly reinventing the wheel? (via RubyInside)
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Feb 29, 2008 - 39 comments

Zed Shaw freaks out on the Ruby/Rails community. It's an enjoyable rant even if you don't know much at all about Ruby and/or Rails. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Jan 4, 2008 - 147 comments

Bytecode-based virtual machines are the Next Big Thing in programming. You can run Lisp, Ruby, Python, OCaml, and yes even COBOL on the JVM. Or if you prefer your languages to be a bit more melodic there's J#, A#, P# and F#. Even C/C++ has a bytecode compiler now. That's not to mention languages that have their own VMs like Erlang or that are writing their own like Parrot or PyPy. [more inside]
posted by Skorgu on Dec 4, 2007 - 61 comments

"Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications" book is free for 60 days. Reader reviews give it 4-stars at Amazon. Like most first editions, there are a few typos to watch out for. [more inside]
posted by spock on Oct 3, 2007 - 48 comments

In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark! Now with 100% more MeFi.
posted by signal on Apr 26, 2007 - 27 comments

Artists in the Animal Kingdom. A gallery including, most notably, work by Ruby the Elephant, 1973-1998.
posted by hermitosis on Sep 21, 2006 - 8 comments

Web programmers take note, gotAPI is an excellent collection of searchable programming references wrapped up into a customizable interface.
posted by Roger Dodger on Sep 21, 2006 - 17 comments

Ruby on Rails 1.1 is out and you can pretend you know what Ruby on Rails is after reading the overview on the homepage or checking out the screencasts if you have some time. Some might recognize this from prior posts (perhaps, undeservedly) or from some of the web applications that were developed with it.
posted by jmhodges on Mar 27, 2006 - 36 comments

My awesomeness is at an all time high, as this chart will clearly demonstrate. And thanks to the magical people at Bellygraph.com, I can create & update charts to illustrate all the trends that matter to me, from my own personal awesomeness to total number of pugs owned or whatever other metric I choose.
posted by jonson on Jan 12, 2006 - 29 comments

Slawesome calls itself "e-mail for your voice" - it's a new web-based service which combines elements of audio blogging and webmail. Messages can be private or public - at least one bleeding-edge blogger is already using it to make voice posts. And it's been built using Ruby on Rails - so it's got to be good, right?
posted by runkelfinker on Oct 18, 2005 - 15 comments

Warning: Geek Hype Alert! Artima.com has just launched a new on-line magazine, Ruby Code & Style. They already host Web `zines for two long-time, corporate powerhouse languages, C++ and Java. For their next subject one might have expected them to go with Python or perhaps Perl, but instead they picked Ruby.

Need more proof Ruby's time has come? The Fifth International Ruby Conference, to be held this week in San Diego, CA, is sold out. The attendance is triple what is was last year. Any readers of Slashdot here likely do not need yet another mention of Ruby on Rails, which has spread like wildfire. But Agile Web Development with Rails is currently in the top 500 over-all sales rank on Amazon, and currently #2 in the Computers and Internet Programming section.

While MeFi tends to focus on more socially-broad topics, I know there is a cadre of geeks here. So, tell me: Is this it for Perl, Python, and PHP? Are the P* languages to be sent packing? Or is this swell of Rubymania just a passing fad, the results of overblown blog hype? And what other programming languuages might be lurking to become The Next Big Geek Thing? (I'm still waiting for Lisp to assume return triumphant.)
posted by Ayn Marx on Oct 10, 2005 - 87 comments

You've heard of Greasemonkey (which allows you to remix web pages in firefox), you might also remember the Ruby Programming Language that all of the cool kids are talking about these days. Mix the two together, make it useable through any modern browser (using a proxy), and voila MouseHole!
posted by freshgroundpepper on Sep 3, 2005 - 9 comments

Now THIS is an eCommerce shopping cart. Holy crap. Ruby and Ruby on Rails: You officially have my attention. (Documentation includes a free first edition book. Intro for OS X friends fiends) and all.
posted by spock on Feb 25, 2005 - 65 comments

Do you find programming books so dry and boring that they're difficult to concentrate on? Do you want to learn Ruby? You need Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby.
posted by reklaw on Jul 6, 2004 - 20 comments